XP running Vista-only games... DX10 on XP... sweet.

Vista-only game cracked
( From TheInquirer.net - confirmed)

Shadowrun debuts on XP



ONE OF THE FIRST games released to be played only under Microsoft's Windows Vista, has been cracked to play on a legacy operating system known as Windows XP.

The infamous warez and hacking group 'Razor1911' has successfully hacked Shadowrun to be played under XP, without any need for DirectX 10.

Apparently the crack just demands that you overwrite a few files in the installation folder with the ones provided by Razor and the game will run happily under XP.

The information text file that ships with the crack states: "Tired of waiting for Falling Leaf to produce drivers so that you can play Shadowrun in XP? The wait is over, because Razor1911 already has the remedy! Yes, you read right. This game will also function in Windows XP".

Falling Leaf Studios had previously reported that they were working on the 'Alky Project' that would contribute 'Alky Compatibility Libraries' to allow the successful running of Halo 2 and Shadowrun on Windows XP machines.

Looks like it was a lot simpler than that.

They should probably change their system requirements now.
______________________________________

Thats right folks, look towards DX10/Vista-only games to be played on XP.... leave it to a hacking group to create the first milestone in breathing new life in an supposed old legacy OS like Windows XP.

As for the Alky Project, it is looking more and more promising as the time goes by. Soon DX10 compatibility will appear on XP. This is definite another kick to the groin of Micrsoft Windows Vista.

Game On People,
-Gophn

 

Another cat and mouse game is about to start....

Can users of the crack play online too?

 

the crack is confirmed to not affect online gameplay... it just makes it so that you can play on XP and not use the disc (of course )

You still are required to have a valid CD-Key to go Multiplayer.

 

lol, take that vista!

 

I wonder if Microsoft will do something about this or let people be. It would be easy for them to atleast block users of the crack from playing online.

 

If a customer buys the game and has XP, then he/she should be entitled to play it on their OS of choice, and not get forced to use another (or to buy another for that matter).

 

Is Shadowrun actually a DX10 game? Or does it just run DX9 with a few checks to ensure it's running on Vista?

 

Shadowrun is not running DX10 on XP, its just running using DX9 shaders. (its still a DX9 game)

But soon, the DX10 only games will arrive for more interesting retro-cracking results.

And the Alky Project should show further progress with more full DX10 games to test with.

 

It is a Directx9 game but the installer and game.exe checks the windows version for Vista.

 

DirectX 10 backported to Windows XP:

So maybe we could actually run some dx10 games on xp without dx10 hardware.

 

Thought so, thanks.

As for the Alky project, it's not going to be in a usable state any time soon. At the moment, they're trying to run all the SM4.0 features off the CPU, which is a lot slower. Maybe one day they'll be able to figure out how to put it on the GPU, but it won't be soon

 

That probably would be illegal because this is about the requirements of the game (not about piracy):
If a game requires 2 Gb of Ram, but somehow you made it run with 1 Gb. Is there anything wrong with that? Should you be excluded from on-line gaming?

 

Microsoft could say that the crack causes problems with their servers or some other bs excuse. Also since the crack also included a no dvd crack it sort of is about piracy also.

 

The release time of DX10 to XP have to be when XP is still quite popular, say before Vista SP1 comes. XP is technically more stable than Vista, given its maturity.

This will have 2 outcomes :
1) Little or no reason to go to Vista just to play DX10 games. (Save money)
2) XP will once again be the reign the world.

 

Are you sure ?
If this is true the Alkyproject is months away from something useful.

 

well, that's the status now, yes. The bits they've managed to do are through CPU emulation.

So yes, they are months (at least) away from something useful.
Still, we can hope for some kind of breakthrough.
(Although the only solution I can think of is to translate all DX calls into OpenGL, and that would be a hell of a lot of work)

 

The Unreal series have always had a OpenGL option in the INI...

hopefully the final release of Unreal Tournament 3 will have the same... screw DirectX.

 

microsoft is dirty as hell.

why release a game for vista only, when they know xp is more than capable of handling it? why artificially restrict it? is that even legal? can they do this?

i mean, ok- if there were some differences between xp and vista so that a slight amount of work was involved in porting it between the platforms... i guess i could understand. it would still be dirty of them not to do it if it was reasonable to do so... but a completely superficial RESTRICTION of use...

thats just evil.

bad microsoft! one os x switcher right here. eat it.

edit: oh yeah, jalf,

"Although the only solution I can think of is to translate all DX calls into OpenGL, and that would be a hell of a lot of work"

i think you can just translate directx 10 calls into dx9 with minimal/moderate difficulty, except that it takes a few more passes to complete those functions. it will just take more time for them to finish it.

 

Here's hoping for more DX10 to DX9 translations and libraries...

or get the DX10 to work with XP... and maybe make an unofficial Service Pack with it.